How hard is it to prevail as a symphonic violinist? What kind of competition does one face and what are the odds of success? What does the job market look like?

According to The International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians (ICSOM), 52 orchestras currently pay a living wage. In the 2003-2004 Season, Minimum Salary in these orchestras ranged from $23,000 to $104,000. Of these 52 Orchestras, approximately 21 pay minimum salaries above $60,000. The size of the violin sections in these orchestras ranges from 26 to 34, with smaller complements being the norm. Therefore, there are an average of 30 violin positions in 21 orchestras that pay serious salaries, for a total of approximately 630 symphony orchestra violin positions in the US. If an average career is estimated 25 years in length, there should be an average of 25.2 positions open in one of the 21 top paying orchestras per year. (Observation over the last 25 years seems to indicate much less!)

It is widely recognized that success as a professional athlete is exceedingly difficult to achieve. The National Basketball Association has 29 Teams, each with rosters of 15 players or less for a total of fewer than 435 jobs, almost 200 fewer than exist at the top of the symphony orchestra food chain. But careers in the NBA can be estimated to be much shorter: using the average of 6 years for career length we can predict an average of 72.5 jobs per year available in the NBA.

Without taking into consideration the current contracting trend of the Symphony Orchestra industry it would appear that a symphony orchestra violin job is rarer than a position on the roster of an NBA team!

Nearly every schoolboy dreams of playing professional sports, so perhaps demand for jobs in the NBA is greater leading to greater competition? Try telling that to anyone who has shown up at a major symphony section audition with over two hundred of their “best friends.” In the symphony orchestra industry women compete on an equal playing field.

The fact is that jobs in major symphony orchestras in this day and age are extremely rare and difficult to win. One saving element of being a violinist or being a basketball player is that success can be achieved in other ways within the field. Just as aspiring basketball players can begin to think about life as a coach or a sports announcer/commentator, etc., aspiring violinists need to be encouraged to think about broader career possibilities from the beginning of a course of professional training.

Acknowledgements to Robert Bein for the concept for this article

Editor’s note: The following was received from a knowledgeable reader asked to critique the above article.

Yo Red Bull!

Your piece is worthy and persuasive and should be seen by thousands of young violinists and their teachers worldwide. Your calculation of average job availability due to retirement is sound…so far as it goes. But it would be more persuasive if you let the reader know that your figures for annual openings in top orchestras are probably biased upwards.

I don’t know all the facts. But I would be terribly surprised if the 60K jobs had the same turnover rate as the 104K jobs. To the extent that turnover (from retirement or any other reason) is higher in the lower quintiles of the “rarified” range, the average of 25.2 annual openings is overstated. By how much? Enough to change your conclusion that becoming a violinist in a top paying orchestra is a “Hoop Dream”?

I doubt it. In childhood the potential supply of future NBA players far outstrips the potential supply of future violin players. But by age 18 or 20 the difference is much reduced. To take just one example, when Scottie Pippen retired from basketball, the Chicago Bulls did not consider replacing him with one of 200 or better different players. A much smaller list of finalists were interviewed and considered during the recruitment season. But when [name famous violinist in orch here] retired, the [name orchestra] did look at 200-some different players. On average, getting a top spot as an orchestral violinist is a Hoop Dream.

Selecting repertoire for student orchestras is subjective and controversial.

Some conductors prefer to program a wide range of music, including numerous contemporary pieces, concertos, and music by composers on the fringe of the mainstream. I disagree with this approach. Music students must become grounded in fundamental principles and techniques of orchestra playing—a lengthy and challenging process. They must be schooled in music that best allows them to learn the skills they will need as professional musicians. These goals are not accomplished when music directors’ egos or the public’s preferences drive repertoire decisions.

The repertoire that most effectively provides these lessons includes selected symphonies by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky, and, to a lesser extent, appropriate works by Berlioz, Wagner, Mahler, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Bartok, and Shostakovich.

Failure to program core repertoire is less a problem than programming music that taxes the musicians’ endurance, creates potential for injury (especially with string players), necessitates too much practice time, and undermines group morale.

If a football coach imposes a thick and complex playbook upon his players, then penalties, injuries, losses, and bickering are inevitable. Comparable damage is done to young musicians by thoughtless conductors and administrators who schedule programs that are too long, too demanding for the strings, and daunting and intimidating for the woodwinds and brass. These people are setting up the orchestra to fail.

It’s naïve to think that young and inexperienced musicians can monitor their complex and demanding schedules and can effectively allocate appropriate time and energy for study, practice, part-time employment, and recreation. Having Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, Wagner’s overture to The Flying Dutchman, and Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony waiting for them in the practice room is quickly demoralizing and a recipe for physical and psychological damage. Doing a few things at a very high level is more productive than giving players more to do than they can manage.

Young musicians must understand what they are playing and become sensitive to sound and blend and phrasing. Intelligent repertoire selection will go a long way in accomplishing this. There is much wonderful and inspiring orchestra music written by the masters that is deeply rewarding and eminently challenging to play, and it’s much better to construct programs that can be well prepared and performed at a high level, that expose the students to the classical music canon, and that create pride in the ensemble.

There are gaps in the way many young musicians are educated today. On the one hand the cultivation of deeper issues of musicianship are often neglected. Instrumental teachers mostly fail to stress the need for students to base an interpretation of the music they work on, both intuitively and consciously, on the harmony, rhythm and contrapuntal texture found in the score. The development of critical listening skills is only minimally addressed, if at all, in many private studios. At the same time practical issues of professionalism are also nearly always neglected in the training of the next generation of musicians.

The focus is normally directed almost exclusively to instrumental proficiency, at the expense of more global musical and professional values. The result of this pattern of training is an army of instrumental automatons who can perform technical tasks on their instruments with a high degree of acrobatic acumen, but possess little in the way of musical intelligence and flexibility. Many of these people win orchestra jobs on the basis of their acrobatic skill and join the ranks of musicians who must either quickly make up for the gaps in their education or pay the penalty for those gaps when they fail to be given tenure.

When speaking of professional efficacy, there can be little debate about the issues. Aspiring young musicians should learn the basics of professionalism from the expectations set for them in collegiate life, if not before:

Attendance

Punctuality

Preparation

Thoroughness

Consideration for colleagues and general citizenship

Seriousness of attitude

These things must be taught and modeled rigorously by professors in order for the need for them to appear credible to students. As a teacher, failure to consistently demand and model all of these things is a slippery slope toward confusion and lower standards for students. Ultimately more students will fail in professional life without the demand for and modeling of professionalism in their student life.

Modeling alone does not provide enough information for students to learn by. Instructors need to be specific about what students must do to be effective their professional lives. I advocate these teaching principles:

Arrive early always! When someone is paying a musician to play, they are paying for the Musician’s best playing. one’s best playing doesn’t happen until a musician is fully warmed up. Being certain of arriving early enough to be fully warmed up means anticipating that there will be traffic jams, delays with public transportation and other unforeseen trouble, and compensating for all of those things through careful planning and vigilant time management.

Over-prepared is only just prepared enough. Musicians should assume that the piece is harder than they think it is. As soon as a musician first knows that they will be playing a particular piece, they should single-mindedly focus on tracking down the music, a score and if possible a recording, until they have all of the material in hand and can begin working on it. Daily practice aimed at faithful execution of the part, and serious study of the score and listening to recordings must become an integral part of their daily routine right up to the moment they walk out on stage to perform. To do less is to sell oneself short professionally.

Professionalism requires thoroughness. It is easier to go to work on a piece that one really enjoys. True professionals do not leave editorial gaps in their preparation. Students should be taught to work on the pieces they like less first, and leave the favored work for last.

Sensitivity towards one’s colleagues is critical to the success and happiness of a professional musician. In the symphonic world it is critical that musicians avoid anything that could be construed as showing off or interfering with another’s ability to be ready to play. Wailing on the concerto du jour while everyone else is warming up before a rehearsal or concert is a huge faux pas that can cost a young professional ongoing engagement. No one is impressed with such antics but rather they are annoyed at having their workspace disrupted. Symphonic work is not about heroic instrumental prowess; it is about solid and reliable professionalism. Warm up discreetly on the material to be covered in the rehearsal or performance. Respect the needs of others to do the same and do nothing that would interfere. Once the rehearsal or performance starts, no symphonic musician need prove any points about how well they are playing or how they actually think the piece should go. Rather, they should endeavor to play in a way that integrates best with their section and the orchestra. All staff people should be treated with respect and dignity; without them the show cannot go on.

Be serious. At the next party one can be beloved as a clown; the workplace should be about business. This does not mean that one must be completely dry, but it is better to err on the serious side when one is being paid for one’s time and effort.

A student should matriculate well-informed of these issues, and with the habit-strength to carry them out.

A couple of anecdotes serve as examples:

Case Study #1:

Based on his dexterity on the violin as demonstrated in an informal audition, one recent graduate was invited to play as a sometime substitute member of a major symphony’s second violin section, a highly lucrative opportunity for a young freelance musician. All week this fledgling symphonic professional slipped into his seat on stage for rehearsal and performance at the last possible moment. He was on time by the clock, but by no means on time for the profession. What he didn’t know was that during the breaks after each time he arrived at the last minute, members of the orchestra across the stage were speaking with the principal of his section about the substitute’s last minute antics. In effect the colleagues of the section principal were the eyes in the back of the principal’s head, as his back was always turned when the young player was tardily slipping into his chair. In most situations the new substitute musician would have been summarily dumped from the substitute list without any explanation. In this case he was given a clear set of guidelines for professional decorum including the need for him to arrive early enough to be at his best for the downbeat. The young player modified his behavior but proceeded to arrive early and hang around backstage playing major concerti loudly. Once again the principal of the section pulled him aside and gave him a heads-up. In the end the lessons were learned, but they should have come from his teachers during his collegiate experience instead of his superiors in the workplace.

Case Study #2:

A cellist newly-arrived as a freelancer in a large city happened to meet a local major conductor. Some interaction followed in which the cellist had the opportunity to display integrity, seriousness and promptness in preparation for rehearsals and performances of a fledgling concert series. Some weeks later the conductor found himself with an opening in a prestigious major venue and immediately thought of the newly-arrived cellist. Although he had not been in town even six months, the new cellist was hired for this high visibility work because his exemplary professionalism had quickly won over the conductor.

Just as students must be expected to demand professionalism of themselves, we as instructors must demand the same of ourselves in order to foster this kind of professional integrity in our students through specific instruction and rigorous adherence to principles that are only self-evident to seasoned veterans.

Intonation is a vexing problem for string players. In fact it is so much so that often one of the distinctions between the most sought-after string performers and ensembles from their professional colleagues less in demand is the quality and consistency of their intonation. The notion of “in tune” as a goal, however laudable, is simplistic. In order to achieve satisfying and consistent-sounding intonation, it is critical to have a concept for tuning, based on certain acoustical realities, and based on the context in which you are working.

Any discussion of intonation in the modern era begins with an understanding of the system of equal temperament. With equal temperament, by adjusting every interval to the same degree in the scale, two problems of tuning chords are dealt with via compromise: octave displacement, and the effect of the qualities of different intervals of the triad in different keys. In the equal-tempered system, music sounds relatively in tune (or out of tune) to the same degree in every key. A keyboard tuned to equal temperament frees a composer to write pieces containing any and every possible modulation. Because of this advantage, equal temperament has become the most universally used tuning system for keyboard instruments. J. S. Bach was one of the first musicians and composers to fully exploit the virtues of the system of equal temperament. The great keyboard sonatas of the classical and romantic eras, and most of the repertoire written in the years since would have been impossible without the equal-tempered system. In the modern era, the equal tempered system also provides a convenient base line for tuning all non-keyboard instruments in a manner that requires no specific knowledge of the harmonic context of a situation. Modern orchestras typically conceive of tuning in equal temperament. Electronic tuning machines generally use equal temperament as their default setting partly for this reason.

However practical it may be as a compromise, for non-fixed-pitch instruments, equal temperament is not a means to the most beautiful or satisfying intonation in either harmonic or melodic contexts. There are situations where equal temperament makes sense for non-fixed-pitch instruments. In the modern orchestra, for instance, any large deviance from equal temperament can leave a player sounding less unified with the group. There are situations in chamber music settings as well, where equal temperament is the most exigent solution to a conflict of acoustical and technical realities.

In certain repertoire, even with fixed-pitch (keyboard and fretted) instruments, there are tuning choices to consider besides equal temperament, depending on the degree to which a piece modulates, and depending on the actual keys to which the piece modulates. Early music practitioners, especially keyboard players, must incorporate an understanding of temperament as essential among the tools they bring to the problems of performance. There are thousands of possible temperaments for tuning, and at various points in history, prior to the widespread adoption of equal temperament as a universal tuning system, various temperaments have informed composers and vice-versa.

The best non fixed-pitch instrumental performers invariably employ intonation based on the harmonic, melodic, and instrumental contexts in which they are playing, even if they don’t always know they are doing so. When playing with piano, string players are most often relegated to a modified version of equal temperament. In some instances we can cheat and deviate from the temperament of the piano, but many times such deviance will leave a string player sounding out of tune with the piano. Other than the instrumental context of playing with piano, there are two other common contexts that present tuning problems: octave displacement and harmonic-versus-melodic. String players need to consider these problems, both intellectually and intuitively in order to develop satisfying and consistent style of intonation.

To understand octave displacement one need only experiment at the keyboard. In the upper-most octave of the piano, sound one single note. Then play the same pitch in the lowest octave. If the piano is well in tune, the notes will sound too close together when played separately, and too far apart when played together. In other words, when played separately the upper note sounds sharp and the lower note flat. When played together just the opposite is true. This is because of the inherent conflict between the overtone series that the true notes produce. In order to achieve consonance between the overtone series in the two notes, they must be pulled together. But the point at which the overtone series line up leaves the notes sounding hopelessly out of tune in any melodic context. The farther apart the octaves are, the more acute the problem. This is the reason why chords built on a wide tessitura are particularly problematic to tune. Equal temperament is a compromise system that theoretically, leaves both pitches acceptably in (or out of) tune for either context.

To understand harmonic and melodic context as it relates to tuning, one can experiment with any string instrument. Cello reveals the issues most acutely because the relationship of intervals in the lower range is broader and the pitch issues are more clearly audible. If you play an F natural on the D string of the cello against the open A string, your ear will naturally perceive the basis of an F major triad. This will cause you to place the F on the high side, in order to leave the third of the chord, in this case the open A string, sounding sweet and low, where the overtone series line up and “ring” in a major chord. That same F rendered against the open G string and perceived as a seventh in a G 7 chord will sound hopelessly sharp. A lower placement of the F will be necessary to arrive at a lined up set of overtones in this context, and achieve the ringing sound of the lowered seventh in the G 7 Chord. The same F, as the third degree in a melodic passage in D flat major, will once again sound sweeter on the high side, as long as it doesn’t have to resonate against the D-flat major triad in the same register. The reality that the third degree of the scale sounds more satisfying higher in a melodic context, and sweeter lower in a harmonic context is a problem with which all non fixed-pitch instrumentalists must contend.

Arguably, intonation in a string quartet raises some of the most problematic tuning issues in music. Modern instrumental training generally doesn’t stress an understanding of temperament, octave displacement, and harmonic and melodic contexts for tuning. This deficiency in training leaves many string players ill equipped for sorting out the issues of tuning in a string quartet. The nature of the repertoire, and the possibility of a totally blended sonority, along with the high standards continually being set by active rehearsing groups, all conspire to highlight intonation deficiencies for groups that fail to meet the highest standards. The attainment of a high standard for intonation in a string quartet is a labor intensive project. It requires that the members spend enough rehearsal time to become familiar with the harmonic role each line serves in a chord, and it demands that the members agree on a shared concept for intonation and pitch temperament in the group.

One example of a tuning problem from the string quartet repertoire is in the beginning of the second movement of Mozart’s Quartet, K. 465, marked Andante Cantabile. The movement is in F major. The opening melodic note in the first violin part is a C natural, one octave above middle C. The second violin plays an A that corresponds with the open A string. If either violinist tunes their note to their open A string, the first violin will be tempted to push the C natural high, in an attempt to achieve a ringing chord with a sweet and low third, in this case A natural. This will ultimately push the whole group sharp to their open strings and the group will lose the sympathetic ring of the open strings. The resulting blended quartet sound will have a deadened quality similar to what one experiences in keys with many flats such as D flat major. In practice there are several possible compromises that will yield a more satisfying result: In one system, both of the violinists must adjust slightly low to their sympathetic open A and E strings in the opening chord, depending upon what the group can agree sounds best. With the first violin adjusting downward slightly, the C natural will sound just a bit low to both the open E and open A strings. The second violin will also compromise, with a note that is neither as low as a “beatless” third, nor as high as the open A string. This type of adjusted temperament is just one example of the complexity involved in bringing a satisfying of intonation to a string quartet. Frequently the quickest path to resolving intonation conflicts in string quartet work is to adopt equal temperament as the goal when such problems arise.

With regard to octave displacement in a string quartet, it is necessary for the group to be mindful of the problem when tuning their individual instruments, as well as when tuning chords. Generally, the outer extremes of range need to be brought together, as in the earlier example of the piano. This will avoid one or the other end of the group having to make an extreme and odd sounding adjustment in a particularly widely spaced chord. I recommend that a group tune as follows:

First the cello should find an A that the group can all agree on. The cello should then tune the tightest possible fifths that still ring. By the time the C is tuned it should be relatively high, possibly even as measured against equal temperament.

The remaining instruments should line up their A string with the cello one at a time (using open strings, not harmonics) and then proceed to tune the tightest possible fifths.

Then the players should each check their G strings (the viola should check the C as well) against the cello’s C string and against the cello’s D string. Some adjustment of the upper players’ G strings is likely to be necessary in order to have all of the fifths line up.

By starting from the same tight temperament in the open fifths the group has the best possible chance to sound ringing and in tune in a wide range of contexts.

When I began to deal with the Piano Concerto and the Concerto for Orchestra, I kept finding that I was writing the same chord plans over and over again in order to find the relationship between them. And so I decided to write out something that was more or less permanent and organized so I wouldn’t have to constantly go back and do it over and over again.

—Elliot Carter

The straightforward title and colorful cover of this volume drew my attention when I happened upon it in the library of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. I have long been an enthusiast and performer of Carter’s music, in particular the first four string quartets, and have worked with the composer on a few occasions, and this book appeared to be a simple manual revealing the composer’s methods and intentions. When I opened it however and scanned its pages, it displayed a staggering and bewildering array of hundreds upon hundreds of chords, each numbered and categorized according to the composer’s own system. The editors’ introduction, and a discussion in which Carter talks about the book are worth the price of admission to this otherwise daunting volume.

Carter began the Harmony Book not as a teaching tool, but as a help to himself. Other twentieth century composers have written texts devoted to compositional methods: Schoenberg, Hindemith, and George Perle come readily to mind. Unlike them, however this volume, has no didactic purpose, so there are no explanations of the material, and no advice is offered to the reader. As the editor says,

With its hundreds of pages of chord charts the Harmony Book seems at first to be nothing more than a statistical table of combinatorial possibilities, the product of an actuary, rather than an artist. Each of the twelve 3-note chords, twenty-nine 4-note chords, etc. is systematically dissected—its supersets synthesized and subsets analyzed—but there is nothing to suggest how this voluminous statistical still-life relates to the mercurial flow that so strongly characterizes almost every piece by Carter. But a closer look reveals deep connections: the actuary and the artist turn out to be oppositely charged elements of a single musical imagination, and their collisions provide the energy that drive’s Carter’s music.

The book is organized into two volumes. The first, chapters 1-8 provide a catalogue and synthesis (the composition of a chord by mean of combining two intervals or chords.) Thus, adding a 5-note chord to a 2-note interval would synthesize a 7-note chord (5+2=7), and adding a 3-note chord to a 4-note chord, (3+4+7) would synthesize a 7-note chord, as well. The first chapter gives a convenient and manageable means of notating all possible intervals and chords, from 2 to 10 notes in the 12-note chromatic scale. There is a total of 220 intervals and chords, each of which is then given a catalogue number. Chapters 2-8 provide six exhaustive syntheses arranged according to expanding chords. Synthesis I explores chords generated by the numbers 1+3=4, 1+4=5 etc., Synthesis II yields 2+1=3, Synthesis VI yields 6+1=7, etc. In volume II the reverse process, analysis is undertaken. Here the division of chords into subsets is given. Thus a 7-note chord would be analyzed as a 6-note chord plus single note (7=6+1), or a 5-note chord plus 2-note interval (7=5+2), or a 4-note chord plus 3-note chord (7=4+3). Chapters 9-13, (Analysis I-V) are dissected chords of 3 to 8 notes. This is a basic, simplified but hopefully adequate account of the organization of the book.

The way the project began reflects Carter’s common-sense approach to compositional problems. Carter was a visiting professor at Cornell University in 1967, and he filled in his time, frequently while commuting by train from New York, by writing this book. “I didn’t like doing it, frankly. It bored me terribly, but I also found it simplified my life, once it was done.” The study began with 3-note chords (for the Piano Concerto,) and expanded to 4 and 5-note chords for the Concerto for Orchestra. The numbering of the chords enables the composer to oversee the harmonic process through the ability to quickly track the chord he is using. In the analysis volume, which lists the subsets or parts of a chord, Carter says, “This was something that I carried out, so that I could know how I could, let’s say, modulate from one sound of harmony to another, while maintaining one, two, three or four notes.” For example, with a 4-note chord you might find a 3-note chord within it to use as a set of common tones to modulate to another chord containing those same three tones…”The idea was how you could move from one world of sound to another smoothly, so that it sounded as if it had a logical connection,” according to Carter.

I have a memory of Elliot Carter at the American Academy in Rome in 1961, while he was working on the Piano Concerto. In the month spent working there with the Lenox Quartet, of which I was the violist, I saw Carter often, and once, upon entering the Villa Aurelia where he lived, I saw him quickly put away a set of charts on the piano, almost as if he were concealing his “actuarial” material. In the past, his desire to be fresh and individual led, I think to his being guarded, not only about his ideas of order, but also his source material. Any lover of the music of Charles Ives will recognize his influence on Carter’s rhythm and harmonic sense. Carter spent some time with the craggy Ives while he was a high school student at Horace Mann School in New York in the 1920’s, and Ives wrote him a letter of recommendation to Harvard College. Yet Carter wrote a scathing review of Ives’ Concord Sonata when John Kirkpatrick premiered it in New York in the mid-1930’s. He could find no order in what he perceived to be the chaos of the piece, even on repeated hearings. Today his views on the subject of Ives have changed, and his sharing of this book seems to suggest that here, too he has had a change of heart, and now believes that excellence is borne out of talent and order, not secrets and magic. With the appearance of the Harmony Book, enthusiasts imagined a collection of almost mystical documents, like Prospero’s books or the Rosetta Stone, with the power to unravel Carter’s harmonic language. The reality is less sensational. There is no “secret” of Carter, any more than there is a “secret” of Shakespeare, Cezanne, Mozart, or for that matter Stradivari.

Long admired for his innovative and challenging use of rhythm, Elliot Carter is now seen as a supreme and original harmonist. It is what any admirer of his work would have expected all along. It should be noted however that even he is not strictly wedded to his own system. If using these chord patterns led him to passages that he didn’t like, he would work until he found passages he did like, even if they didn’t follow his systems exactly. He has claimed that he no longer uses the Harmony Book, that other aspects of composition, like spacing of chords and musical characterization are what interest him now. Here is part of his interview with editor Nicholas Hopkins:

Hopkins: It’s interesting that you moved away from that kind of formal structure at about the time the Harmony Book was completed.

Carter: That’s right. I didn’t feel that was what I needed to do. I was more concerned with the general big sweep of the piece, and how one produced the general main effect, rather than these small detailed matters. I don’t know. Different ideas come to me at different times. I can’t explain it more than that.

At this point the editor adds a postscript:

Not long after this conversation, I was surprised to receive a large package in the mail from Elliot Carter. It contained the most recent edition of the Harmony Book with numerous corrections. That he would so casually send his personal copy I took as further evidence that the Harmony Book no longer played an active role in his composing. But a week or two later I got a phone call from Mr. Carter asking me to send it back as soon as possible. ‘I’d forgotten how much I depend on it,’ he said.